Gaming or Sharing at Lan-PartiesWhat is going on?
Fredrik Wallenberg, Marc Fetscherin, Charis KaskirisUniversity of California, Berkeley
School of Information
AxMedis ConferenceDecember 2, 2005
Agenda
Introduction
Research Approach
Analyses and Results
Conclusion and Discussion
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Why do we care?
3
Popular with Users
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Piracy is costlyThe Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) estimates these losses at about 12 billion USD per year across the world.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) came up with a figure of about 4.3 billion USD per year.
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) arrived at a value of about 3 billion USD per year.
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Piracy is risky
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Why Lan-Parties are Interesting
“right” demographics
high bandwidth
low risk of detection
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What is a Lan Party?
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Big!
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High Performance Networks
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Young males
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Tournaments
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Multi-Player Games
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Social Event
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Lots of them!
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Agenda
Introduction
Research Approach
Analyses and Results
Conclusion and Discussion
16
HypothesesH1: Gaming is the primary motivation for going to LAN-parties
H2: There is a unique group of “sharers” different than the “gamers.”
H3: Free-riding is less common at LAN-parties than...
H4: Greater bandwidth means larger files.
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Methodology & Data Collection
LAN-Party # 1 2 3 4
Participants 400 50 300 500
Duration (days) 3 3 4 3
# Respondents 22 22 51 62
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Agenda
Introduction
Research Approach
Analyses and Results
Conclusion and Discussion
19
H1
Gaming is the primary motivation for going to LAN-parties
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Why go to a LAN-Party?To participate in playing multi-user games
To share digital content files
To meet friends
To learn about new hacking/cracking
To attain information about regarding DRM
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Are you here to game?
14.4
30.1
11.614.4
26.0
No!Yes!
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Are you here to share?
16.4
32.2
10.3
26.7
12.3No!
Yes!
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Many share files...Median # files Made Available Downloaded
Music 200 50
Movies 10 10
Software 5 5
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H2
There is a unique group of “sharers” different than the “gamers.”
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Are “sharers” different from “gamers”?
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38 21 17 44 21 5 146
1 0 1 0 1 0 3
6 1 4 5 7 1 24
13 7 4 16 5 2 47
4 1 2 5 3 0 15
6 9 4 16 3 1 39
8 3 2 2 2 1 18
Pearson χ2 (25) = 24.50 Pr = 0.491Cramér's V = 0.18
gamma = 0.12 ASE = 0.090Kendall's τ-b = 0.09 ASE = 0.071
Are “sharers” different from “gamers”?
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26 27
23 33
Sharers
Non-Sharers
GamerNon-Gamer
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Are “sharers” different from “gamers”?
Do Gamers Share?
axes: number of files shared/downloadedplot: quantiles
Quantile-Quantile Plot29
H3
Free-riding is less common at LAN-parties than on P2P networks.
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Free Riding
Free riding on P2P networks: Connect to the network without sharing any files.
Free riding at Lan-Parties: Download at least one file while sharing none.
We care because the value of a sharing network goes up the more content is being shared.
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Sharing v. Downloading
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Sharing v. Downloading
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Free-Riding?
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Free-Riding?
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Comparison to P2P
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Music Movies Software Total
Free Riders 28% 29% 28%
Adar /Huberman 70%
43%21%
E. Adar and B. A. Huberman. Free Riding on Gnutella. Technical report, Xerox PARC, August 2000.
H4
Greater bandwidth leads to download of larger files.
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D/L: LAN-Parties v. P2P?
P2P Networks LAN-Parties
Music 69% 71%
Movies 25% 94%
Software 46% 73%
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D/L: Music/Movies Mix
P2P Networks LAN-PartiesFetscherin/Zaugg 13 : 1
5:1Film Distributers Association 13.6 : 1
M. Fetscherin and S. Zaugg. Music piracy on peer-to-peer networks. In IEEE International Conference on e-Technology, e-Commerce, and e-Service, Taipei, 2004. IEEE Computer Society.
F. D. Association. Downloading danger. Technical report, Film Distributors’ Association, 2004.
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Agenda
Introduction
Research Approach
Analyses and Results
Conclusion and Discussion
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ConclusionWhile Lan-Parties officially caters to gamers, there is a lot of sharing going on.
Everybody shares.
There is less free-riding at the Lan-Parties than on P2P networks.
Features of Lan-Party networks promotes sharing of larger files.
This could predict sharing behavior on a higher bandwidth internet.
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